This is to confirm that SysAdminMan no longer offers FreePBX or A2Billing hosting. There were a few reasons for this decision but one of that main ones was, in my opinion, Sangoma’s aggressive commercialisation of FreePBX and their “FreePBX” trademark. It did not make commercial sense to continue building a business under these circumstances. According to Google Analytics there are still a couple of thousand visitors a week that use the site, so I will leave it here, but will not be adding new guides or tips.

I’ve written quite a bit about using OpenVPN with a hosted FreePBX system but it can be difficult to provide an overview, so I thought I’d do a quick video to show what’s possible. There are some great benefits to using OpenVPN to connect to a hosted FreePBX server, including – bypasses any NAT issues with routers bypasses any issues caused by SIP ALGs in routers audio is encrypted over the internet port 5060 (SIP) can be closed on the FreePBX system gets round issue of allowing dynamic IPs in the FreePBX firewall Check out the video for an overview…

I’m testing an interesting product this week from a company called Andrews & Arnold. It’s a way of using a UK GSM mobile phone with FreePBX/Asterisk that I’ve not seen before. The service is a PAYG “SIM only” mobile phone service. You get a SIM card to go in your existing mobile phone, which must be either unlocked or on the O2 network –

One of the easiest ways to listen to new voicemails is to get Asterisk/FreePBX to e-mail them to you as an attachment. One downside of this is that if you try to listen to them on your mobile phone they will play via the speaker. This makes it tricky to listen to them discreetly! For Android there’s a little App called Earpiece that allows you to specify that media is played through the earpiece, rather than the speaker. This is quick to switch on temporarily while listening to the voicemail. It may be hardware dependent, but it works fine on my OnePlus One….

Because VOIP works over the internet there is no real concept of “local”. However, our telephone users may be used to dialing numbers in a certain way. Maybe they dial 9 for an “outside line”, maybe they don’t have to dial the area code for “local” numbers, etc … We can accommodate this by manipulating the number the user dials in to the format expected by our call provider. You can manipulate the number either on the “Outbound Route” or on the “Trunk”. Which you choose depends on your setup and why you are manipulating the number. For example if…

When you get your newly installed FreePBX 12 system there are a few steps you will probably want to take to get calls going in and out of your system. This guide goes through those steps. See below for information on … 1 – Configure an extension 2 – Choose a call provider 3 – Configure a trunk 4 – Configure outbound calling 5 – Configure inbound calling Once you’ve completed the steps above you’ll be able to make extension to extension calls for free and also make/receive calls to external telephone numbers. And here are some further guides for…

Configuring inbound calling can be one of the trickiest things to get working in FreePBX. Here we are going to configure the inbound number we purchased with Localphone. One of the most important points is that you must match the inbound phone number exactly as the call provider are sending it to you. This can vary by provider so check with them what you should do. If you still can’t get it working open a support ticket and we’ll check it out. 1 – Select Connectivity / Inbound Routes from the main menu 2 – Enter Inbound Route details

For outbound calling we need to tell FreePBX what trunk (call provider) we should use when we dial a number that’s not an extension number or a special internal number. We need to specify 2 things at least – the number pattern to match and the trunk to send the call via. The number pattern can be anything from “all numbers” to say numbers starting with “447540”. We can use this to send different types of calls via different providers. Maybe we want to use one provider for landline calls and another for mobile calls. 1 – Select Connectivity /…

A trunk is our connection to the outside world. We use it to tell FreePBX about any call providers we use for inbound and outbound calls. You can set up as many trunks as you want. Configuring a trunk with different providers will be similar but can vary in the exact settings used. If you’re unsure how to configure FreePBX with your provider ask them for information about configuring their service for use with Asterisk (and specifically FreePBX). If you still can’t get it to work open a support ticket and we’ll check it out. Here I’m going to use…

There are literally hundreds of different call providers to choose from (sometimes called ITSPs) and choosing one can seem daunting. The good news is that any provider that supports SIP should work with Asterisk. The only difficulty is some providers don’t publish details on using their service with Asterisk. If you’re thinking of using a provider ask if they have details for using their service with Asterisk – it’s also a good opportunity to test out their support! Here I’m going to use Localphone but the process is usually similar with other providers. You sign up for an account, deposit some…